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Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has called for a “two-state
solution” to the Israel-Palestine problem. It might not be the
first time that such a solution has been sought, but Canada's support
for it is questionable. Since coming to power in 2006, the
Conservatives have been vocal supporters of the Israeli state.
Though Canadian policy has often been supportive of Israel, it has
never been as strong as it is today under Prime Minister Stephen
Harper.

Under
Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada supported
the creation of Israel in the aftermath of the Second World War in
1948. The war had bound Canada to its Atlantic allies, the United
States and Great Britain, to an unprecedented extent. Canada’s
support for Israel was less about a sense of righteousness for a
Jewish homeland and more about support for its war-time allies.
Zionism, the belief that the Jewish people required their own
homeland, had little impact on Canada's evolving post-war policy.
Equally, Canadian public opinion was not really concerned about the
political consequences of the establishment of an Israeli state;
instead, they were influenced by Christian concepts of the “Holy
Land” and sympathy for what Jews had experienced at the hands of
the Nazis during the war. This support of Israel's creation proved
to be long lasting.

Canadian
prime ministers have had an uncertain relationship with Israel.
Though Lester Pearson, the son of a Methodist minister, may have
believed in their right to the Holy Land, he understood the political dilemma of
Israel's presence in the Middle East. During the Suez Crisis of
1956, he helped champion the first use of peacekeepers to enforce a
truce between Egypt and Israel in the Sinai Peninsula, and Pearson
was critical of the United Nations decision to withdraw at Egypt's
request in the lead up to the Six-Day War in 1967. Canada, along with
many other members of the UN, voted in the aftermath of the 1967
conflict to call on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank. Prime
Minister Trudeau supported sending peacekeepers back to the Sinai
Peninsula in 1973 after the Yom Kippur War and condemned Israeli
aggression during the war with Lebanon in 1982. Still, these
criticisms did little to dampen Canadian-Israel relations.

So
despite recurring criticisms of Israel’s actions towards
Palestinians, Canadian-Israeli relations were fairly moderate. Our
1996 Free Trade Agreement with Israel is now worth over a billion
dollars a year. Under Prime Minister Paul Martin, Canada abstained
from a 2004 UN Resolution calling for Israel to abide by an
International Criminal Court ruling that their occupation of the West
Bank was illegal. Still, Canada tried to balance its support and its
criticism of Jewish state. All of this changed, however, after the
election of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. After the election of
Hamas in Palestine, Canada was one of the first countries to boycott
their government, declaring them terrorists. In the following years,
Canada has shifted closer to Israel and we have become one of their
most vocal supporters internationally.

It
is less clear why this transformation took place. While Canada has
had a changing relationship with Israel, we have never been extremely
vocal about it. Canada has neither been a strong ally or an enemy of
the state. Many have asked why Stephen Harper's Conservatives
interrupted this trend. Since 2006, many commentators have asked
what reasons lay behind the Conservative shift. While it's clear that
Canada has become closer to Israel, official justifications often
revolve around empty, diplomatic lip-service to our shared support
for democracy and human rights. Without more detailed and
comprehensive answers, it is difficult for Canadians to understand
the decisions of their government.

Several
left-wing commentators have attacked Harper’s position, though
without proof, it is often impossible to write anything more than
conjecture. Yves Engler is not alone in suggesting that it is an
attempt to gain Jewish votes, though others rightfully point out that
there are few ridings where Jewish votes would make or break an
election victory. Engler also writes that Stephen Harper is
appealing to his evangelical, conservative base. As well, the
Conservatives and the Israelis share a desire for a politically and
economically powerful military. For Engler, Israeli actions against
Palestine represent an issue of basic human dignity, not ethnic
conflict between Jews and Arabs, and Canada should adopt appropriate
policy without using it to appeal to voters or Conservative ideology.

More
recently, James Cairn offers criticism of the Prime Minister's
Israeli policy from the left with a different perspective. He writes
that, “in an increasingly competitive global economy, the Harper
government is staking Canada’s future on becoming a leader in the
field of natural resource extraction and related hi-tech industries.
It recognizes Israel as a model of this sort of economy and the type
of social system required to support it. Israel is a trailblazer in a
range of neoliberal strategies that the Harper government desperately
wants to profit from and mimic.” To Cairn, the new direction of
Canadian-Israeli relations can be tied directly to other political
and economic policies pursued since 2006, comparing Israeli treatment
of Palestinians to Canada's own problems with its Aboriginal peoples.
Israel's “lessons in mobilizing the emotional basis of national
identity to consolidate its version of neoliberal settler
colonialism” is a compelling reason for our closer relations, but
there remains scant actual evidence of this connection.

An
examination of Canada's policy towards Israel leaves many questions
surrounding its purpose. Speeches from Ministers and Departments
offer little concrete information, and commentators are left to
propose suppositions and conjecture. Canadians, whether they agree
or disagree with the move, require more information from our
government about it. We deserve to know more about why Canada is no
longer content to balance between condemnation and support for
Israel. Government policies should not be justified as necessary
simply because the Government has enacted them. There must be real
explanations for their actions beyond empty tributes and political
rhetoric.